


Married Life at the Moated Grange

by oursin



Category: SHAKESPEARE William - Works
Genre: F/M, Fix-It, Shakespeare
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-04-22
Updated: 2015-04-22
Packaged: 2018-03-25 07:23:36
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 328
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3801772
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/oursin/pseuds/oursin
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>What happened after the end of Measure for Measure</p>
            </blockquote>





	Married Life at the Moated Grange

The Lady Mariana's devotion to Lord Angelo is a legend in Vienna. Did she not plead for his life before the Duke, in spite of being jilted by him, in spite of his aspersions on her character? Though he is a disgraced man, cast out from the Duke's counsels, she defers prettily to him when visitors come to the moated grange, asks his advice, even though everyone knows that it was her grasp of business that enabled her to recover her fallen fortunes.

Two lovely children, too!

Such a pity that Lord Angelo suffers so with his health, so frequently sick, and the physicians helpless to understand his ailment.

Even though Lady Mariana seeks the prayers of the sisters of St Clare, so noted for their sanctity, and in particular that holiest of the sisters, the former Isabella.

***

In the convent parlour, a screen. If they converse, the sisters may not show their faces.

Mariana puts down the bundle she is carrying.

'I no longer need this habit. Even that can no longer arouse him.'

'His health grows no better?'

'Nor will it. I thank you for the lending of it. I have my children - my darling babies. He owed me that, leaving me neither wife, widow, nor free woman for so long.'

***

Lord Angelo lies abed, mortally sick. No-one comes.

The door opens. Marianna looks in.

'Why, my lord, you have not drunk your posset.' She comes further into the room. 'Here, let me help you to it.'

He stares in terror, but is too weak to resist when she lifts his head, raised the cup to his lips. 'This will cure what ails you.'

***

Black suits the Lady Mariana, as she follows her husband's coffin. The heavy veiling hides the smile on her lips. Five years. Five years, measure still for measure, Angelo has suffered. No-one would have believed claims made by such a disgraced man against his so obviously loving wife.

Now she is free.

**Author's Note:**

> Generated by seeing a production of the play in which the Duke was particularly ineffectual and creepy, and Isabella was clearly born to be a Mother Superior and probably ending up as Reverend Mother of the entire order. The Mariana/Angelo marriage is never anything other than 'why doesn't she just let the Duke have his head cut off once she is made an honest woman of?' But as cruelty goes, like Catherine Sloper in Washington Square, she was taught by masters.


End file.
